


Something Old & Something New

by kaibasetos



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 09:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3405119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaibasetos/pseuds/kaibasetos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was supposed to be an angel but they took him from that light and turned him into something hungry, something that forgets what his hands are for when they aren’t shaking.</p><p>[Sequel to Something Lost & Something Gained.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Old & Something New

**Author's Note:**

> In the comments of Something Lost & Something Gained, a wonderful user asked for a sequel to that fic. I hadn't even thought of writing one when I first posted SL&SG, but the idea stuck with me and I found myself needing to vent-write so here it is! It's not really necessary to read SL&SG before you read this as it's kind of a standalone sequel, but I feel it would help give it some context. I hope you like this if you see it, Wren!
> 
> In keeping with the theme, the summary, opening and closing lines of this fic were taken from the poem ["Start Here"](http://alonesomes.tumblr.com/post/78510570406/start-by-pulling-him-out-of-the-fire-and-hoping) by Caitlyn Siehl.

Repeat to yourself “I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you.”

They’re sitting together in the bed of Jounouchi’s beat-up pickup truck. It’s old and it creaks every time they move and Kaiba has been questioning its ability to hold their weight ever since they sat down, but Jounouchi had insisted on being the one driving them ( _"c’mon, Kaiba, I promise you’ll be safe without your chauffeurs for once"_ ) so here they are. The wind is calm and cool, tousling their clothes. It’s pleasant and refreshing weather, a welcome reprieve from the frigid winter that’s been plaguing them.

Jounouchi has brought him to a place Kaiba hadn’t even known existed. It’s a cliff a ways from Domino City, overlooking its brilliance. The bright glimmers of light from the buildings and streetlamps paint quite the serene pretty picture. From here, the cars look small enough to be insects, their headlights the only thing distinguishing them from the streets. The bed of the truck is turned towards the city so they can see the way it illuminates the night.

Jounouchi looks sidelong over to Kaiba, trying to gauge his emotion, but of course that’s all but impossible. His face is carefully pieced together, unreadable. He’s gazing out over the city with a look in his eyes that suggests he’s not even present in his body.

The breeze stirs his hair. He looks gorgeous, like this. He looks breakable too.

Jounouchi takes the last drag from his cheap cigarette, living in the way the nicotine hits his throat and fills his lungs before he exhales slowly. The smoke dances upwards for a moment, swirling picturesque against the backdrop of the inky sky before it’s whirled away by the wind. He puts the cigarette out against the bed of the truck, and that catches Kaiba’s attention. He’s there again all at once, snapping his head towards Jounouchi with his brow furrowed.

“Is that even safe?”

Jounouchi laughs at his question, shrugging sheepishly as he drops the cigarette butt to the ground. He watches Kaiba’s critical eyes follow it all the way down and then pull back up to him. “Who cares? Welcome back, by the way.”

Kaiba frowns before he turns his face away again, looking back to the city. “What do you mean, welcome back? I’ve been right here the whole time.”

“Have you really?”

Jounouchi’s question is innocently inquisitive, his eyes probing for an answer, but Kaiba refuses to give him one. He acts as though he hasn’t heard the words, a defense tactic Jounouchi is all too familiar with. His shoulders are pushed back, his posture confident, and Jounouchi remembers with an unwelcome jump in his chest the way Kaiba had looked in his office not a week prior, so totally unlike this. Crumpled and strained, a wounded animal. Jounouchi doesn’t want to see him like that again, and yet there was something there. Something he hadn’t seen manifest itself in Kaiba before and hasn’t seen since. Something he wants.

“Kaiba,” Jounouchi prompts him, and Kaiba glances at him out of the corner of his eye but doesn’t acknowledge him further than that. His hands are clenched into fists, but it seems to be more out of habit than anything — Kaiba isn’t used to not having something to do with his hands, not having something to keep him busy. Of course, that was the intent of this excursion. Take him out of his element. Pry him open, gently and carefully.

Lay him bare.

“D’you remember the talk we had in your office?”

The intake of breath is enough of an indication that he does, audible even over the sound of moving branches and leaves, but Kaiba treats conversation like any other game: he doesn’t lose easily. Jounouchi knows that by now.

“We’ve had many talks in my office,” Kaiba replies pointedly, and Jounouchi shifts, making the truck tremble underneath him. Kaiba looks so strange and out of place here, dressed so smartly and sitting so neatly in the back of Jounouchi’s ancient, practically broken-down car. He likes it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Jounouchi waves him off, grinning a little despite himself at Kaiba’s choice of wording.  _Many_  talks. To think, how far they’ve come. “Y’know the one I’m talkin’ about, though. The one where I asked ya about your past—”

“I don’t care to discuss this.”

Kaiba’s interruption is swift and cold, shutting him off, and Jounouchi immediately holds his hands up in surrender in a mimicry of what he’d done on that night. It’s instinctual, a gesture he makes all too often in Kaiba’s presence, an  _I know_  and an  _I’m not going to hurt you_ , but it doesn’t seem to soothe Kaiba any judging by the way his hands are clenching harder and his knuckles are turning white. Shit.

“I wasn’t gonna,” Jounouchi replies in the most calming tone he can manage, and when he drops his hands down again he lets his right hand rest on top of Kaiba’s left. Kaiba glances down at where their skin meets before looking out over the city again, but Jounouchi doesn’t miss the brief look, nor the fact that he neglects to move his hand.

Nor the fact that he actually starts to relax.

This is progress, and it feels so good. Kaiba’s skin is so cool under his own. He runs his fingers over Kaiba’s, hearing that little intake of breath again in response, and this is so addicting. It feels like fireworks, like discovering buried treasure, like some sort of royal privilege few have been granted. He could be content simply doing this all night if he were so inclined. He has a mission, though, and he’ll be damned if he lets it slip out of his grasp.

“I was just gonna say, I mean.” Jounouchi pauses, rubbing his own shoulder with his free hand, looking at Kaiba with a mix of trepidation and fierce determination. “I just want you to know I’m here.”

Kaiba scoffs, but Jounouchi can already tell before he even speaks that he’s just playing the conversational game in his head again. It’s just like chess to him, and he’ll never allow himself to be caught in a checkmate. “Of course you’re here. Where else would you be?”

Jounouchi has to bite his tongue to keep himself from making a smartass comment in reply. It’s so difficult not to when Kaiba is so goddamn stubborn and practical, but it’s a necessary practice to achieve the results he wants. Jounouchi may be reckless, but he's not stupid and he can play this game as well as Kaiba can. Their snarky arguments are always fun, but that’s not what he’s after. Not right now. He wants to see Kaiba again, really  _see_  him. Only this time he wants to see him in a better light.

He wants to see greenery start to bloom in that desolate, unkempt garden of his.

“That’s not what I meant,” Jounouchi objects, but of course Kaiba knows that. He just needs it spelled out for him, as always. “I meant I’m here for you. Y’know. If you ever need me, if you ever do… wanna talk about it.”

Kaiba’s expression suggests that that is definitely never going to be the case, but Jounouchi pushes forward anyway, his grip on Kaiba’s hand tightening. He can’t lose now, not when he’s come so far.

“I want you to think of me, not him.”  _Not Gozaburo._

Kaiba stiffens at that, finally turning towards Jounouchi. That thin little crack in his veneer is showing again, but this time instead of weakness and pain etched into his features Jounouchi just sees fragility, questioning. If Jounouchi is correct — and he usually is, he won’t kid himself with lying — the look on his face is one of surprise. It’s a rare sight coming from Kaiba, but it’s there. Surprise. Surprise, and maybe, if he isn’t reading too much into it, a little bit of… Tenderness?

“What?”

Kaiba’s voice is barely above a whisper, and Jounouchi has never heard that tone come out of his mouth before. It stirs something in him, something protective, something almost possessive, something warm and pulsing from deep within him. When something enters his life that Jounouchi wants to defend, he defends it with all he has, every passionate spark and every raging punch and every angry barb spat from his mouth.

It’s taken him too long to realize that Kaiba falls under that category.

“I said I want you to think of me,” Jounouchi repeats, a little louder and more self-assured this time. He takes his chances by moving in closer, making the truck creak and shudder again, and when Kaiba doesn’t move away he leans in to press their foreheads together. It’s just a little thing, just a light touch, but it forces them to make eye contact and in Kaiba’s eyes he can see the wariness, the animalistic need to flee. He runs his thumb over the back of Kaiba’s hand and he thinks he feels Kaiba tremble. “Not your past, your present. Just think of me. Here with you, right now. I’m right here, Kaiba.”

Kaiba opens his mouth to speak, but Jounouchi pulls Kaiba’s hand up and laces his fingers with Kaiba’s, pressing their palms together, which seems to stop his speech dead in its tracks. In the distance the wind blows and, even further away, the bustle of city life fills the air, but up on the cliff it’s only them. The two of them under the stars, hands clasped.

“He can’t hurt you anymore.”

The words seem to break Kaiba down instantaneously. His hand grasps Jounouchi’s so tightly it hurts, his nails biting into Jounouchi’s skin hard enough to leave imprints. His shoulders quake and his mouth moves like there’s something caught in his throat that he can’t breathe around, so Jounouchi gives him a reason not to breathe.

He leans in closer, and he kisses him.

It’s soft at first, a gentle meeting of mouths, but when Kaiba processes what’s happening his other hand rises to rest on Jounouchi’s jaw, pulling him in, pulling him deeper. They break apart for half a second and then kiss again, harder this time, right on the border between ardent and aggressive, and Jounouchi loses himself for a moment in this. Kaiba’s unspoken way of channeling his gratitude, pouring out all of the emotion he won’t allow himself to express in words but instead uses his lips to communicate for him in different ways. It’s so much, consuming, overwhelming, exactly what Jounouchi was looking for. He gives back the passion himself, meeting Kaiba at every inch and yard and mile, hoping that Kaiba can hear what he isn’t saying just as well as he can. He feels like an anchor holding Kaiba to the earth where their palms and mouths touch, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

His other hand is curled up in Kaiba’s shirt and Kaiba’s tongue is in his mouth, twining around his own, tasting burnt ash and sweetness. It’s so open and so deliberate and so clumsy and it feels like a promise.

It feels like peace. It feels like home.

When they finally break apart, breathing in cool night air like it’s enough to change them, Kaiba is looking at him in a way Jounouchi can’t quite place. It’s strange and unfamiliar, like Kaiba is seeing him anew. It’s ragged around the edges, his brow furrowed again and his mouth a straight line, but in his eyes it’s softer and a bit hopeful.  _Hopeful_. The thought fills Jounouchi’s chest with light and triumph impressive enough to win twenty world wars.

It’s so silent and still it feels like time has stopped, but then Kaiba is touching his face so gently it almost destroys him. That look is still there, and Jounouchi recognizes it suddenly, reflected through his own face. The look you give something you cherish. The look he’d given Kaiba that Kaiba hadn’t been able to understand.

“It’s beautiful here,” is all Kaiba says, a simple reference to the atmosphere in that typical suave manner that comes coupled with his typical facade, but Jounouchi knows that isn’t all he’s saying and he knows that facade isn’t there either. He starts to grin. He feels so boisterous he could laugh at the sky, in all its glory.

“Yeah, it is,” Jounouchi replies, and the undertone of his voice instead says  _yeah, you are_.

Repeat to yourself “I won’t leave you, I won’t leave you,” until you fall asleep and dream of the place where nothing is red.


End file.
